Participant

Question

Character animator problems

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
March 28, 2020
4 replies
2926 views

Hi,

I've created a scene with an animated puppet in Character Animator.

I exported the scene to premiere pro and the video freezes and only the sound plays.

I made another video a few weeks ago with the same puppet and the same time length and no issues.

Now, however, no matter how many new scenes or arrangements I try, premiere pro freezes when I try to export my cartoon.

Also, when I've tried to export the scene through adobe encoder, it takes an insanely long time (over 2 hours--for a 3 minute video)

My laptop is brand new, HP spectre, 16gb ram, nvidia graphic card.

I've only used 14 gb of storage on the cloud out of 100 available.

I've updated all software and my computer.

I went through tech support--all their test videos worked fine.

So, I'm thinking it must be something i'm doing wrong in character animator, but I cannot figure out what.

I tried another puppet as well and the same issue happens. The sound plays, but the video freezes.

Any ideas?

Problem or error

oksamurai

Legend

In Premiere, try selecting your track and going to Sequence > Render Selection. Does it run now?

J

jenniferj79798907Author

Participant

Hi, thanks for helping,

I've tried that and it takes over 2 hours to render for a three minute scene. It takes that long for every scene I've tried from character animator. I've used different puppets and different projects.

oksamurai

Legend

Do you do a lot of work with Premiere and After Effects? Do those render significantly quicker than projects involving CH? If it's just CH, then it's probably something with dynamic link slowing things down - I would export as a PNG sequence and WAV and see if that changes anything. If it's all these programs, then it must be something at the OS level...and I'm not sure what that would be...

alank99101739

Legend

Okay, that was useful. Some more theories and tests to try to narrow it down.

The database might be corrupt: Did you create a new project when trying the demo puppets in a short scene? If that is fast but the same thing in your existing project is slow, maybe the project database got corrupted for some reason.

There might be a graphics card hardware fault: In the preferences somewhere I think you can pick different rendering engines. CUDA, OpenGL, etc (I dont remember where or what exactly). Try different options there. I think one is to not use hardware acceleration. If that goes faster, maybe the gfx card is playing up.

You have Malware or other badness: Antivirus software gets most but not all malware. Hard to spot, but when you bring up the performance monitoring tools (e.g. CTRL-ALT-DEL on WIndows, then start up Task Manager, look at performance tabs) is anything running at 100%? E.g. is memory 100%? Is CPU 100%? When you start a render, what changes? Is there another app that is using all the CPU?

Did you turn on any cloud sync software recently? Maybe its fighting over the disk file access.

Are all your files on the local hard disk? Network and thumb drives play up with CH at times.

So more tests sorry, but I don't think its your puppet. It is something about the computer or overall project. Hopefully the above will eliminate more options. I suspect you will need some of the Adobe core team (who are in these forums) help, but the more we can eliminate options before Monday it will probably help them narrow in on the problem faster.

J

jenniferj79798907Author

Participant

Thank you for all of the suggestions.

Yes, I've created new projects with different puppets.

I have tried the different CUDA, OpenGL and software only methods.

I've checked the malware security and task manager.

Nothing is syncing in the cloud.

I've uninstalled all the apps again and reinstalled them. Still no go when I import a scene into premiere pro. Sound plays, but the animation blurs and gets freezes.

I'm so upset at this point. I was working on a video for work and at this point there's no way I'll be able to finish it 😞

The tech people from adobe have also quit responding to me.

alank99101739

Legend

Some of the core engineers and qa etc on in this forum. Hopefully one of them can suggest something. But it sounds like it's for all projects (not just one), it happens on demo puppets (so its not something you have done), it happens with all render modes (so its not dependent on that).

Do you have a second computer you can try it on? You are allow to install on two computers, but only run on one at a time from memory. The strange thing is nobody else is reporting the same issue. That suggests its either something like a new patch that not everybody has installed, or something wrong with your machine that is causing Ch to slow down so badly. Yeah, that is frustrating.

When you looked at task manager, did you note whether the CPU or memory is maxed? It is trickier though with multiple cores, working out if it's maxed is not easy at times. Might be time to wait for a core engineer.

alank99101739

Legend

When you say you export the scene to prem pro, does that mean dynamic link? If exporting takes hours, that is probably why the video is stopping and audio is continuing. It has to do the same effort in rendering I think. I would eliminate Prem pro for now by only exporting video to a file until solved.

I would look at or just after point in video it got stuck. Is there something different that kicks in at that point. Physics, different character, etc. I would try shrinking the workspace to say the first 10%, export that, try next 10% to see if a particular point in scene is going wrong.

Another approach is to use eyeball to disable one puppet at a time in scene when exporting slow section. that might identify which puppet is going wrong.

I would also suggest creating a new scene using demo puppet from adobe. Export that. Is it fast? If slow, I would reinstall CH, try again. That would indicate it is CH playing up for some reason, not your puppet.

Basically trying to narrow down if a puppet, if an action in scene, if software and not your scene, etc.

Have you checked to see if running out of memory etc while running? Anything unusual with disk I/o? Eg is antivrus software running and slowing down the machine?

J

jenniferj79798907Author

Participant

Hi,

Thanks so much for your help.

Yes, I've used the dynamic link. Again, I did this exact thing with the exact puppet and few weeks ago, and even threw in some other effects i created from after effects in there and all ran perfect. Then, when I exported the final video through adobe encoder it only took a few minutes.

Now, same puppet, same time length, and premiere pro will only play the audio and freezes the scene immediately--the puppet even gets all fuzzy.

I've created different scenes since then in differing lengths of time with different demo puppets and I have the same problem. I can hear the sound, but the video freezes after less than a second.

I've been through 2 tech support people for premiere pro and their test videos worked fine, but they weren't imported from character animator and both techs just forwarded me a link to a beginner site on character animator.

I have uninstalled all adobe apps from my computer and reinstalled and still having the same issue.

I think I must have restarted my computer about 30 times since yesterday, lol.

I have plenty of memory.

No issues with antivirus software...

davescm

Community Expert

Hi

I've moved your post from the Photoshop forum to the Character Animator forum.

Dave

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